


seventeen

by Ffwydriad



Category: Marvel (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Avengers vs X-men, Character Study, Gen, blatant cyclops apologism, like partially the event but also just in general you know?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: You are seventeen, the first time you fight the Avengers. A part of you knows this won't be the last time.You're right.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	seventeen

You are seventeen, the first time you fight the Avengers.

You won, technically. You were able to complete the mission. None of the team got arrested. The world was saved. That counts as a victory, in your book, and you need all the victories you can get.

It doesn't feel like a victory. The Avengers think you're a supervillain.

It shouldn't hurt, as much as it does. It doesn't matter, what the Avengers think, not compared to what the press thinks, what the world at large thinks, and while they may have an impact on that perception, it's hardly the only thing that does.

You are seventeen, and you haven't been a child for a long time, not since you were ten, not really, but you're sitting in the medlab, and everything hurts, and you can't help but feel small, and young, and scared.

Here's what you do, when you are scared: you learn a way around it. You find solutions to the problems, and you steel yourself against the world.

A part of you knows that this isn't be the last time you will fight the Avengers. 

You're right.

You are eighteen, the second time you fight the Avengers.

You're lucky. There's no cameras around, no press to report on the mutant menace. Even if - even when they tell of this fight, there won't be the visuals to even further set the world against you. You're lucky they never show up at any of the times when you help a newly powered mutant, the people you can't abandon.

The second time, you're alone. The X-men have been captured by Magneto, and Pietro and Wanda are working with him again. Pietro tells you Magneto's plan, and it sounds good, too good to be true, and you have to remind yourself it's a trick, because Magneto always lies.

You make a mistake. You hit Pietro too hard, and the constant panic that you try so hard to suppress overtakes you. You don't want Pietro to be hurt. He's - he isn't your friend, you don't have friends, outside of the X-men, you've spent so much time fighting him, but he's probably one of the closest things you have, and you respect him, and he has to be okay. 

The Avengers show up out of nowhere. You don't have time, not to sit down and convince them you aren't a threat, risk getting arrested while Magneto hurts Hank and Bobby and Jean. You don't even know if these are the Avengers, that it isn't some trap by Magneto, to convince Pietro and Wanda that he's right, to remind you all that trusting humans is a bad idea.

So you fight, and you run, and you break your team out, and you fight the Avengers. Wanda and Pietro and Toad escape on a plane, and Magneto doesn't, and you grab Angel out of their custody and run, while the Avengers are distracted searching for Magneto's body.

They don't find it, just like they don't find you.

Later, you all sit in a diner, and the food may not be good, but it's warm and it's filling and it's cheap. Warren apologizes. He'd run for help, found the Avengers, and they had decided he was a spy for Magneto.

You are twenty two, when the world ends.

It isn't the first time the world has ended, not for you. You've lived through the end of the world three times, although only one of those was really true, and it was the end of the universe, for a second, for eternity.

This time, you watch the galaxy give way to nothingness, as you stand on the station and look up at the void. You aren't supposed to be here, but here you stand, in full costume, as if nothing has truly changed.

And then it doesn’t matter - doesn’t matter what happens, if you win or lose, because Magneto is there, and you suddenly are forced to wonder if you’ll make it out of here alive.

This isn’t to say that you expect the Avengers to kill you - the Avengers rarely kill. But the battle before you is against a band of supervillains, against Doctor Doom and Galactus, and you aren’t certain that they won’t decide you’re better off locked up here, that they won’t leave you to some death at the hands of a supervillain, accidentally or on purpose.

You see the way they look at you and your team, when you rally to Magneto’s defense. You know that however many mutants end up on the Avengers, you’re still a band of almost-terrorists, in their eyes. 

You manage to get out of it without fighting the Avengers. Well, you fight Spider-Man, and you fight Wasp, and there are hours of tense conversation and angry yells, but it’s better than, well, better than it used to be. 

Better than it used to be. That’s about how it all shakes out.

There comes a point when you stop counting how old you are. You’ve died, and come back, and travelled to different worlds, and spent years in the future with a body not your own, and even if you could calculate how long you’d lived, you’re not certain it would matter. All you know is that you feel very old, and very tired. 

When the Phoenix comes, you can’t help but feel joy. The Phoenix terrifies you, as well it should. It excites you, as well it should. It makes you think of Jean, and that is a maelstrom of emotions that can’t be pinned down at all. For the most part, however, you think of the future. Because the Phoenix is life, and that’s what you need, right now.

You fight the Avengers. 

You fight the Avengers again. 

You burn with fire more brilliant and radiant and powerful than you could ever imagine, and you cling to the person who you used to be. You cling to humanity. You cling to love. 

You stop counting how many times you fight the Avengers. 

In the end, all that is left to cling to is the tired embers of rage, everything else stripped away by clenching hands and lost to the flame, and you hold on to it tightly and grasp the memories which keep fluttering out of reach and you are an inferno, and you are lost to the Phoenix. 

When you wake up, everything has gone wrong. 

When you wake up, everything has gone right. 

The Avengers call you a terrorist. And now, the X-Men do to. It’s been a long time since you heard it said with such earnestness. It surprises you, how little it hurts to hear, but then, you've never been one to forget what you learned, and you learned a long time ago that no matter how much you respect the Avengers, how much you believe them to be good, you can never be certain they'll afford you the same leeway.   


You do what you’ve done from the start. You find the children with nowhere else to turn, the people you will never abandon, and you offer them your hand. 

For what will never be the last time, you fight the Avengers.

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't going to post more marvel stuff, but reading snaphots: cyclops gave me feels and I've been sitting on this since IVX and felt the urge to finally post it. 
> 
> still don't entirely know how i feel about it, but there's parts about it i really like that won't get out of my head...


End file.
